265 Sheet – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

Search for:

Reading Time: 4 minutes [616 words]

Here is the translated text as follows:

LEO M. FRANK, 233

I called on a detective, preferably a Pinkerton detective, to work with and assist the city detectives in ferreting out the crime. Then I went downtown to the pencil factory, and upon entering the office, I saw the following men there: Mr. Herbert Schiff, Mr. Wade Campbell, Mr. Darley—Mr. Holloway was out in his place in the hall—and Mr. Stelker, Mr. Quinn, and Mr. Ziganke. These foremen were sitting around because we had shut down the factory, as they told me, due to the fact that the plant was wholly demoralized. The girls were running into hysterics; they couldn’t stick at their work, they were crying and going on over what had happened there. Mr. Quinn said he would like to take me back to the metal department on the office floor where the newspapers had said that Mr. Barrett of the metal department had claimed he had found blood spots and some hair. They then took me over to the place in front of the dressing room where it was claimed the blood spots were found. I examined those spots, taking a strong electric flashlight that he had around there, and looked at them and examined them carefully. With reference to those spots that are claimed to be blood that Mr. Barrett found, I don’t claim they are not blood; they may have been. They are right close to the ladies’ dressing room, and we have had accidents there where people just cut their fingers and then go back to work. We don’t make any record of it, and we have people there cutting their fingers very often. When they cut their fingers, their line of travel is right by that place where Mr. Barrett found those spots, right to the office. While I don’t say that this is not blood, it may be, but it could also have been paint. When I got down and looked at it, you could have scratched away from the top of those dark stains an accumulation of dirt that was the accumulation of at least three months, from off the top of these spots, without touching the spot itself. That white stuff, in my opinion, was a haskoline compound.

I returned after making this examination to my office and gathered up what papers I had to take over to Montag Brothers. I took the financial report which I had made out the previous Saturday afternoon, and I talked it over with Mr. Sig Montag.

I returned from Montag Brothers to the pencil factory, accompanied by one of the traveling men, Mr. Sol Hein. Upon my arrival, I went up into the office and distributed the various papers all over the factory to be acted on the next day. In a few minutes, Mr. Harry Scott of the Pinkerton detectives came in, and I took him aside into my office, my private office, and spoke to him in the presence of Mr. N. V. Darley and Mr. Herbert Schiff. I told him that I expected that he had seen what had happened at the pencil factory by reading the newspapers and knew all the details. He said he didn’t read the newspapers and didn’t know the details, so I sat down and gave him all the details that I could. I took him around the building, first back to the metal room and showed him the place where the hair had been found; showed him the spot in front of the dressing room and took him to the fourth floor; took him down into the basement and made a thorough search, which included an examination of the elevator well at the bottom.

---